God’s law is clear and unambiguous: thou shall not
kill.
Human life is sacred because, from the moment of conception until
its natural end, it involves the action of God.
The
fifth commandment forbids direct and intentional killing as gravely
sinful.
Abortion is evil; it is the killing of a defenceless baby in the
womb and is a sin against the commandment.
The church has a serious
obligation to speak against abortion.
The
consequences of remaining silent are grave.
Those bishops and priests
who refuse to take Catholic pro-abortion politicians to task for their
words and actions embolden such individuals to commit even greater acts
of evil against human life and dignity.
A failure to call evil by its
name inevitably leads to the spread of more evil until eventually
society accepts evil acts as normal.
The legislation that is being proposed by
Fine Gael is far worse than the UK abortion Act where more than 7.5
million preborn babies have perished since 1968. This exceeds the size
of some of the most infamous genocides in human history.
Then there are
the methods used in the killings. If you want to know what commonly
happens to the preborn baby while getting aborted, watch Silent Scream or Eclipse of Reason films on YouTube. There would be public outrage were the same procedure done to an animal.
Sometimes
the politicians will justify their stance by claiming they cannot
impose their religious views on others.
Enda Kenny has even claimed he
has a duty to legislate for abortion but it is simply not possible for a
Catholic to reconcile his faith with support for abortion no matter how
limited he believes it to be.
Whenever there is
conflict between civil law and the moral law of the church, it is always
the duty of the Catholic to resist the civil law and obey the law of
the church.
As Pope John Paul II explained in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae:
“Indeed, from the moral standpoint, it is never licit to co-operate
formally in evil. Such co-operation occurs when an action, either by its
very nature or by the form it takes in a concrete situation, can be
defined as a direct participation in an act against innocent human life
or a sharing in the immoral intention of the person committing it. This
co-operation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the
freedom of others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it
or requires it.”
The Second Vatican Ecumenical
Council said: “God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble
mission of safeguarding life, and human life must be protected with the
utmost care from the moment of conception: Abortion and infanticide are
abominable crimes” (Gaudium et Spes, No. 51.3).
Pope
Francis when a cardinal in Argentina issued a clear statement regarding
the consequences of supporting abortion – disallowing Communion for
anyone who facilitates an abortion, including politicians. He was
upholding Cardinal Ratzinger’s instruction that persistently
pro-abortion politicians or public figures must not be admitted to
Communion until they publicly repent.
This year, His Eminence Raymond
Cardinal Burke, prefect of the supreme tribunal of the Apostolic
Signatura, told the Catholic Voice newspaper: “With regard to
Canon 915, it states that those who obstinately persist in manifest
grave sin should not be admitted to receive Holy Communion. There can be
no question that the practice of abortion is among the gravest of
manifest sins and therefore once a Catholic politician has been
admonished that he should not come forward to receive Holy Communion, as
long as he continues to support legislation which fosters abortion or
other intrinsic evils, then he should be refused Holy Communion.”
Those
bishops who have the courage to admonish politicians on this critical
issue do it because it is their duty and because they are being faithful
to the teaching of the church. The faithful of Ireland are right to
expect their bishops to speak about the sinfulness of abortion, which is
the social justice issue of our time.
Anthony Murphy is the publisher of the Catholic Voice newspaper and founding member of the Irish chapter of the international lay apostolate Catholics United for the Faith.